Jury Tells Samsung to Pay Apple $290 Million

Captivate, left, and Epic 4G figure in Samsung’s patent dispute with Apple. The tech giants will meet again in court next year.

Jeff Chiu / Associated Press

By BRIAN X. CHEN

November 21, 2013

SAN JOSE — A jury on Thursday said that Samsung Electronics would have to pay Apple $290 million more in damages for violating patents, putting an end to one chapter in the long-running patent struggle between the two tech companies.

The six-woman, two-man jury calculated the damages based on 13 products that infringed Apple’s patents. They determined that two smartphones incurred the heftiest damages: Samsung’s Infuse 4G, at about $100 million, and the Droid Charge, at $60 million.

While the price tag will not significantly affect either company’s pocketbooks — they are two of the most profitable companies in the technology industry — the ruling did give Apple another victory in the companies’ continuing legal fight.

In August last year, a California jury determined that Samsung had infringed on a series of Apple patents and needed to pay more than $1 billion in damages. But the judge, Lucy H. Koh of the Federal District Court for Northern California, later vacated $450 million of the original award, saying it was unclear how the jury had calculated that portion, but said Samsung owed the remaining $600 million.

The latest trial, also overseen by Judge Koh, was to determine whether Samsung needed to pay more or less than the $450 million that was vacated. In the trial, which ran for about a week in San Jose, Calif., lawyers for Apple and Samsung focused on how to calculate the damages: in lost profits or in royalties. The trial covered five patents and 13 products.

Apple said in a statement that the case “has been about innovation and the hard work that goes into inventing products that people love.” It added, “While it’s impossible to put a price tag on those values, we are grateful to the jury for showing Samsung that copying has a cost.”

Lauren Restuccia, a Samsung spokeswoman, said, “We are disappointed by today’s decision.” She added, “While we move forward with our post-trial motions and appeals, we will continue to innovate with groundbreaking technologies and great products that are loved by our many customers all around the world.”

Apple argued in the most recent trial that it deserved $379.8 million because it missed out on large amounts of profit after Samsung’s smartphones entered the market. Samsung contended that Apple should get much less, $52 million.

Legal experts said Samsung was most likely trying to minimize the damages to safeguard itself in future fights. The final award could influence another jury to make similar damage calculations.

This time, the process for calculating the amount Samsung owed was simpler than in the previous trial. The jurors had to fill out a one-page form assessing the damages for each infringed patent, unlike last time, when jurors filled out a complex 20-page form.

Still, the new jury appeared to have some trouble crunching the numbers, taking parts of three days to reach a conclusion. On Wednesday afternoon, the judge called a meeting to answer questions from the jury about how to decide whether Apple was entitled to lost profit, and if so, how to calculate it.

Apple’s lawyer, Harold J. McElhinny, showed an internal Samsung document to highlight that employees had acknowledged that the battle in the mobile industry was a “two-horse race” between Apple and Samsung. Therefore, he said, many sales made to Samsung most likely could have gone to Apple.

Samsung, however, said that it should pay a much smaller amount in the form of royalties for each device it sold that carried the infringing features. Its lawyer, Bill Price, said that Apple was not entitled to lost profits because people had bought Samsung phones for reasons unrelated to the features covered by patents, like the fact that some Samsung phones had bigger screens and that Samsung’s phones and tablets were generally cheaper than Apple’s.

Also on Wednesday, Samsung tried to delay the entire trial. The company argued that a patent involved in the trial, which covered touch-screen mechanics, might be deemed invalid by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. In light of that, reaching a verdict now would be wasteful, Samsung said.

But Apple said in a response late Wednesday that Samsung’s motion to delay the trial had “crossed the bounds of reason.”

Apple and Samsung continue to fight in courts around the world. In the United States, the tide has shifted in Apple’s favor. Both companies persuaded the United States International Trade Commission that the other had violated patents, resulting in bans on each other’s products. The Obama administration ultimately vetoed the ban on Apple products, while upholding the ban on Samsung products.

The two companies are scheduled for another trial in March 2014. That trial will involve a different set of Apple patents and some newer products, including Samsung’s popular Galaxy S III — a smartphone that at one point surpassed the iPhone in sales. Judge Koh is expected to also oversee that case.